Authors and their public in ancient times

by George Haven Putnam

Even without the aid of scholarly government supervision and of liberal government appropriations, the public libraries of Rome and of the leading cities of the provinces must have been of no little importance in furthering the literary interests of the time, while they rendered to posterity the important service of preserving not a few works which would otherwise apparently have perished entirely. For this latter service we are indebted, however, not only to the libraries but to the vanity of the authors, who for the most part took pains to place in one or more of the public libraries copies of their writings as soon as published. Of certain works of which the originals have disappeared, such knowledge as we have comes to us only in the fragments given in the school readers, which for each generation of young students were made up of extracts from the books of the previous generation of writers.

Some of these “classical” readers of the period of the early Empire were copied for use in the monastic schools of some centuries later, but these were in large part speedily superseded by the collections of legends and breviaries which came to be accepted as the proper literature for the monastery and the convent.

In addition to the “grammarians” buying books for their professional needs, and the city libraries purchasing for the public welfare, there were, during the first two centuries, an increasing number of private collectors, not a few of whom, however, bought books, not from any scholarly interest, but simply because it became the fashion to do so. Seneca speaks of great collections of books in the hands of men who had never so much as read their titles.[255] Such purchases must nevertheless have been important for the encouragement of literary work in Rome. Many of the public baths were furnished with libraries[255]; a country house could not be complete without a library, says Cicero[256]; each one of the villas of Italicus, according to Pliny, had its library[257]; Trimalchio, says Petronius,[258] possessed no less than three. A statue of Hermes, found in Rome, bears an epigram which speaks of βύβλοι in the grove of the Muses, and which undoubtedly had been intended to be placed in the library of some country villa.[259]

Among some of the larger private collections referred to are those of the grammarian Epaphroditus, who possessed 30,000 volumes,[260] and of Serenus Sammoaicus, who is credited with over 60,000 volumes.[261]

The impecunious Martial, on the other hand, tells us that his own collection comprised less than 120 rolls.[262]

We have already referred to the practical interest taken by Martial in the details of bookselling. We find him quoting the authority of the booksellers against certain critics, who were not willing to rank Lucian as a poet of repute, and showing that after thirty years or more there was still a steady demand for Lucian’s poetical works.

Martial takes the ground that continued popular appreciation is sufficient evidence of literary repute, whatever the critics may say to the contrary.[263]

The same satirist refers more than once to many amiable and deserving authors, who, despite their talents, succeeded in reaching no public at all other than the unhappy guests who learned from experience to dread the admirable dinners which had to be paid for by listening to literary productions. The practice of recitations on the part of the host must have been quite general, if when no such performance was intended it was considered desirable to mention the fact in the invitations. Martial quotes himself as promising to Stella in inviting him to dinner, that under no provocation will he be tempted to recite anything, not even though Stella should recite his own poem on the “Wars of the Giants.”[264]

Martial explains the inferiority of the literary production of the reign of Domitian by the fact that there was no Mæcenas to give encouragement to authors. All the great poets of the Augustan age had, as he recalls, been placed in easy circumstances (as far as they were not so already) either through the direct bounty of Mæcenas or as a result of his influence over the Court. According to the view of Martial, literature possessing any lasting value is impossible without the leisure and freedom from care which comes from an assured income. Mæcenas, and the fashion of subsidizing literature initiated by him, appear in a crude way, in presenting encouragement for literary work, to have supplied the place of a copyright law.

There may, of course, often have been question as to what constituted a “proper compensation” for a poetical effort. Tacitus speaks of a certain Roman knight, C. Lutorius Priscus, who had won some repute from a poem on the death of Germanicus. He thereupon composed another poem on the death of Drusus (son of Tiberius), who was at the time seriously ill, but who was perverse enough to recover. Priscus had, however, already read his poem aloud, after which he was promptly put to death under a vote of the Senate, whether on account of the badness of the poem, or because he had prophesied the death of the Prince, Tacitus does not state.[265]